The first two pictures here show the North America Nebula, cataloged as NGC 7000. It is about half of an enormous cloud of dust and gas approximately 2580 light years away. The other half is the Pelican Nebula shown in the other two images. The two nebulae are separated by a dark band of something that is opaque to visible light but it will let radio and infra red light through; this was discovered after space based telescopes had become fashionable and they evolved to see frequencies other than visible light. The whole complex covers an area of sky ten times that of the moon but it is very faint. It cannot be seen with the naked eye without some clever filers and then it's just a blur.

The red color comes from hydrogen emisions - the hydrogen-alpha line. There are several other colors buried in this complex but it would take filters to pull them out - beyond my patience for now.

These images come from two full nights of data gathering from my party deck - about 10 hours of actual capture, and about 16 hours including setting up and screwing up. I could have just looked up a Hubble picture and drooled a bit.